flag football

Summerside Flag Football teams to compete at Nationals

Ryan Quigley

Journal Pioneer

Two Summerside flag football teams will be representing P.E.I. at the 2011 Canadian Flag Football U-16 National Championships at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

The Summerside Raiders are competing in the boys division coached by Trevor Bridges, while the Summerside Giants are competing in the girls division and coached by John Turner in the tournament, which begins Friday.

In the boys division, the Raiders will compete in a 3 game round robin with the three other teams in their pool, before moving into cross over game with a team from the other pool. If they win the cross over game, the team will move on to semi-finals and finals. There are eight teams representing eight provinces in the division including Summerside, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia.

The Giants will play five games in a round robin. The top four teams will then move on to semi-finals and then to finals. Six provinces will be represented on the girl’s side, including Summerside, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia.

Bridges said the goal for the Raiders is to get into the top four.

“I would think that with the competition we’re going to face, we’re probably going to be middle of the road, lower end in the beginning. But as the week goes on we’re hoping to peak near the end.”

He said that defense is his team’s strength.

“Offensive game plan is just to move down the field periodically, just five or ten yards at a time, and have everybody do a good job on their play and make sure we execute our game plan and if we do that, we should be alright on offense.”

 With a young team, only two on the team Brohan Brennan and Tyler Snyder have played at the national level before, the first few games will be about experience said Bridges.

Turner said he thinks the Giants are good enough to make it into the semi finals.

CAPTION: The Summerside Giants’ Lydia Schurman tries to avoid Northwest Territories U-18 players Orie MacGregor, back, and Skyler Lane, front, at an exhibition game Wednesday morning at the Summerside Intermediate School’s football field in Summerside.

“We got a good team and a good quarterback in Laura O’Neill and we got a lot of speed so hopefully that will be what we need to win a few games.”

He said his team has been practicing defense, particularly tackling.

“If you play good defense you’ll be in every game so if we do a good job of tackling we’ll be successful.”

He also has worked on a new offensive strategy with the girls to try and catch opposition defenses off guard.

“We plan on using that in our first game, just going into the hurry-up offense to start the game,” he said. “They probably haven’t seen that all year.”